He has made a number of television programmes for BBC2 including Art that shook the world: Richard Wagner's Ring, Portillo in Euroland, Elizabeth I in the series Great Britons, When Michael Portillo became a single mum, Portillo Goes Wild in Spain (a natural history programme) and The Science of Killing (for Horizon). There followed documentaries on the unburied bodies from the Spanish Civil War and Guantanamo Bay.

In 2010 BBC Radio 4 carried his 3-part series "Democracy on Trial". For BBC4 he has made several series of Dinner with Portillo, a discussion programme, and in 2008 The Lady's not for Spurning (about Margaret Thatcher's legacy).

In 2006 he joined The Moral Maze team on BBC Radio 4. In 2003 he began the weekly political discussion programme This Week on BBC1 with fellow presenters Andrew Neil and Diane Abbott MP.Michael is a member of the International Commission on Missing Persons in the former Yugoslavia (which organises the identification of massacre victims) under the chairmanship of Jim Kimsey, and sat on of the Board of BAE Systems plc from 2002 to 2006.

He joined the board of the Kerr McGee Corporation in 2006. He is President of DebRA, the national charity working on behalf of people with the genetic skin blistering condition, Epidermolysis Bullosa (EB). He was British chairman of the British-Spanish Tertulias (an annual high level conference) 2004-2008.

In 2009 and 2010 he has made 45 half hour programmes for "Great British Railway Journeys". The second series is expected to be screened on BBC2 early in 2011.

Beginning in 2004 Michael became a frequent columnist on The Sunday Times and was the theatre critic of The New Statesman between 2004 and 2006. In 2008 he chaired the judges of the Man Booker prize.